App developers are on an increasingly complex journey to understand what the heck users are doing — and, ultimately, figure out how to get them to do it more...or less.

Mobile exchange Nexage is hoping to help by making its premium monetization solution available to the app developer community, as of Wednesday. It’s a move that makes sense considering that the needs of developers are starting to look pretty much like the needs of premium publishers.

At the top of the list are user engagement, brand safety — AKA managing app store rankings — avoiding bad ads and generating continued and sustainable revenue.

“We simply don’t feel that the current set of solutions are able to meet these needs,” said Victor Milligan, CMO of Nexage. “Developers need solutions built and perfected in the premium segment tested by premium publishers that worry about money, users and brand every day.”

The last thing an app developer wants to do is sacrifice quality in the name of making a buck. But, Milligan noted, there’s “significant competition for consumer attention and loyalty, as consumers only use a select set of apps or play a select set of games."

“In part, they compete based on the strength of their in-app ad capabilities,” Milligan said. “While there is pressure to grow in-app revenue and ad revenue specifically, there is also pressure to keep users engaged with relevant and quality ads, to avoid bad ads and, more to the point, to avoid the case where bad ads can impact app store ratings.”

Nexage’s solution aims to help developers tap into mobile inventory via roughly 225 premium global buyers, including a variety of DSPs, ad networks and agency trading desks. The tool also supports scalable native ad formats, and gives developers access to the Nexage’s SDK, its ad server and its yield optimization algorithm, as well as to a suite of protective features, including ad verification, ad screening and malware. To top it off, Nexage mediates between ad network sources in concert with RTB to help developers find the best networks to serve their ads.

“Our buyers are used to serving campaigns to our premium publishers, so developers don’t have to trade quality and revenue performance,” Milligan said.

If an app wants a shot a longevity and recurring revenue, it has to act like the brand it is.

“Making money has become more complex because this isn’t just about making money and not caring what happens to users,” Milligan said. “Developers care deeply about what happens to their users and there is a growing recognition that the requirements they have in the app store are not so different from that of brands. All you have to do is substitute the words ‘app store ranking’ for ‘brand.’”